Health progress (Saint Louis, Mo.)
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Pain management is a societal problem because of concerns about the use of drugs, the belief that patients are not good judges of the severity of their pain, and an alarming level of ignorance about pain and its treatment among physicians, nurses, and other healthcare providers. The result is that patients suffer pain unnecessarily, even up to the point of their death. Pain management is also a clinical-practice problem. ⋯ In improving their ability to manage pain, professionals must understand the difference between pain and suffering, acute and chronic pain, and the sensory and emotional aspects of pain. Guiding principles include Church teaching and ethical principles, such as patient self-determination, holistic care, the principle of beneficence, distributive justice, and the common good. Pain management strategies that will be instrumental in formulating effective responses to these problems include expanding professional and community education, affording pain funding priority, establishing institutional policies and protocols, forming clinical teams, encouraging hospice and home care, and requiring accreditation in pain and symptom management.
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In April 1992 the Committee for Pro-Life Activities of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a resource paper titled "Nutrition and Hydration: Moral and Pastoral Reflections." At best, this document and its conclusions may be viewed as a pastoral statement, offering some tentative reasoning and conclusions to be considered in cases that concern the use of medically assisted nutrition and hydration. When discussing the question, is the withholding or withdrawing of medically assisted hydration and nutrition always direct killing? the document applies two principles--"no reasonable hope of benefit" and "involving excessive burdens." The document's crucial part is its admission that artificial hydration and nutrition may be removed without the intention of causing death, and that "this kind of decision should not be equated with a decision to kill or with suicide." The committee assigns decision-making responsibility to patients, families, and healthcare professionals, but continues its discussion for 20 pages and offers cautions conclusions concerning removal of such therapy. Two assumptions seem to underlie the document's overly cautious conclusions, the first being that mere vegetative function mandates continued life support. ⋯ It also is contrary to the goal of medicine, which envisions restoration of cognitive-affective function as an element of successful therapy. The second assumption is that withdrawal of artificial hydration and nutrition from persons in PVS may lead to euthanasia. But mandating the continuation of nonbeneficial therapy simply because it prolongs physiological function seems to lead people to favor euthanasia rather than reject it.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)